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The Big Parade

King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925) was an astounding and in
many ways unprecedented film, that captured the human dimension
behind war from a grunt's point of view and offered a masterful picture of
the psychological devastation of battle.

Vidor's emotional epic opens as three young men from different walks
of life are thrown together as soldiers and fast buddies during World War I: a son of privilege James Apperson (John Gilbert), a Bowery bartender Bull (Tom O'Brien) and a gawky ironworker Slim (Karl Dane).

The trio's experiences billeting in France are initially
light-hearted and charming. James woos a beautiful village girl
Melisande (Renee Adoree) who looks just like his fiance back home.
In the meantime, Bull and Slim try to horn in on Melisande, who
doesn't speak a word of English and seems overwhelmed by all of the
romantic attention. The sequences between James and Melisande, as he
shyly flirts and she shyly retreats, made the most of Gilbert's
remarkable flair for understated acting, as well as the pairing of
the two charming, well-matched actors (the duo teamed up one more
time in 1930 for Redemption). The scene where consummate
American James teaches Melisande to chew gum captured the wonderfully
light and subtle touch both actors had with comedy. Vidor has noted that the scene was entirely improvised after he watched his cameraman
chewing gum and decided to use it to embellish an otherwise vague
love scene.

The pairing of these two romantic leads boosted Gilbert's popularity and allowed Adoree, a
veteran of the circus and the Folies-Bergere, to rise from a respected
actress in the MGM stable to star status. Gilbert broke out of his more
typical romantic leads to movingly portray the doughboy James
Apperson, who goes from naive kid to a painfully wizened man over the
course of the film. That image-change only solidified Gilbert's fame
and transformed him into a superstar.

As James, Bull and Slim experience more and more of the war, their
youthful enthusiasm is chipped away. In an absolutely devastating
battle scene in Belleau Wood, the men line up with bayonets ready and
gradually march into the fire of German snipers hidden in the forest.
Shot from high angles to capture the number of men involved, and also
straight-on to capture the terrified expressions of individual men,
the sequence has a nightmare immediacy enhanced by John Arnold's
cinematography and Gilbert's effective acting. One by one, snipers
hidden in the treetops and Germans manning machine guns pick off the
American soldiers as they continue to march relentlessly forward.
Vidor created the chilling effect of men marching to their death by
using a bass drum during the shooting to force the actors to keep
time to the beat as they marched. "Everybody was instructed that no
matter what they did, they must do it in time to the beat. It's all
so relentless," said Vidor. Sound was also used to emotional effect
during the film's remarkably successful run at the Astor Theatre on
Broadway, where eighteen men with bugles and wagons filled with iron
created sound effects to replicate the experience of actual
battle.

As the story progresses the bond between the trio grows tighter and
they take enormous risks to protect one another, including a risk
that proves fatal and ends in a heartbreaking expression of fraternal
love. According to a Variety review of the time, that scene of
one friend dying while the other cradles him in his arms, "had the
majority of the audience in tears."

It was the success of Laurence Stallings' and Maxwell Anderson's
stage play What Price Glory? that inspired MGM's adaptation of
Stallings' The Big Parade. Vidor stuck close to the gritty
realism of Stallings' wartime recollections when he worked with the
writer on adapting the film. The Big Parade included scenes
of unfiltered violence, like a wounded soldier with blood running
down his head and graphic language in the film's intertitles, to
reflect the realism of Stallings' own wartime experience in WWI
where he lost a leg in Belleau Wood.

"War had not been explored yet from the realistic GI viewpoint,"
Vidor noted, "It was more based on songs like 'Over There' and songs
of that sort."

That The Big Parade was the first war film told from the
doughboy, rather than the officer's perspective, helped explain its
enormous popularity. As testament to its power,
The Big Parade was commended again and again by veterans of
WWI for its accuracy.

To convey that wartime authenticity, Vidor relied heavily on Signal
Corps footage of battle and troop movements to help in choreographing
his film, and also incorporated some of that footage into the film
itself.

The Big Parade established Vidor as one of the top directors
of the age. The film made MGM a mint, but while it raised his status
in Hollywood significantly, Vidor unfortunately signed away his
percentage share and was thus unable to capitalize on the film's
enormous financial success. Vidor would continue his unique
combination of humanism and technical virtuosity in films to come
like The Crowd (1928) and Our Daily Bread
(1934).